Atea Pharmaceuticals reports Q4 EPS (41c), consensus (45c)

Reports Q4 cash, cash Equivalents and marketable securities $646.7M on December 31 compared to $764.4M at December 31 .."This year, we are poised to continue the meaningful progress made with our clinical development programs following strong execution in 2022," said Jean-Pierre Sommadossi, PhD, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Atea Pharmaceuticals. "We anticipate several significant clinical milestones for our lead compound, bemnifosbuvir, including an interim analysis from the Phase 3 SUNRISE-3 trial for COVID-19 followed by completion of targeted enrollment by year end. In addition, we plan to initiate patient enrollment in the Phase 2 combination study of bemnifosbuvir and ruzasvir for HCV next quarter, with topline results expected by the end of the year." "We also have made the business decision to deprioritize the dengue program to focus on COVID-19 and HCV," added Dr. Sommadossi. "We believe AT-752 holds promise for the treatment of dengue as an oral direct acting antiviral. However, it has become clear that improved diagnostics are needed to better identify patients earlier in the course of the disease. In addition, given the high variability in both treatment and prophylaxis settings, substantially larger patient sample sizes would be required for future Phase 2 studies. With the anticipated long clinical timelines and significant associated cost, we will focus our resources on the COVID-19 and HCV programs at this time."